BigAnt Studios to develop AFL Live 3 - Petition

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BIG ANT STUDIOS MAKE AFL LIVE 3!!!

BIG ANT STUDIOS MAKE AFL LIVE 3!!!

BIG ANT STUDIOS MAKE AFL LIVE 3!!!

BIG ANT STUDIOS MAKE AFL LIVE 3!!!

BIG ANT STUDIOS MAKE AFL LIVE 3!!!

BIG ANT STUDIOS MAKE AFL LIVE 3!!!

BIG ANT STUDIOS MAKE AFL LIVE 3!!!

BIG ANT STUDIOS MAKE AFL LIVE 3!!!

BIG ANT STUDIOS MAKE AFL LIVE 3!!!

BIG ANT STUDIOS MAKE AFL LIVE 3!!!
 
Let's face it NO AFL game will sell enough units to break even on anything other then a smart phone or tablet.

The funding just isn't there, die hard footy fans that are gamers will buy anything that's released.

But to attract the number of consumers required to have strong sales means the game publishers must dramatically rethink funding.

From what I've read AFL live had the same budget as an EA sports loading screen.

Now sure the uber conservatives will bring up the that AFL supporters are a niche market in gamer terms.

But the fact is people will not buy a game that has sub par graphics and animations.

Honestly if we want a well done AFL game it needs to be offshored no domestic publisher has the capital to invest what needs to be invested.
 

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Surely the AFL itself can help fund on a project like this. The groundwork has been done over the last 15 years to know what works and what does not.

I believe the hardest thing with an AFL game is ensuring each and every aspect is user friendly. AFL Live 1 was the closest thing I believe to touching on that, while AFL Live 2 made the game far more appealing with its innovation in the AFL game.

We just need to combine the two, have modest funding from the league itself (I mean, seriously, as if the AFL are not getting PAID for licensing....so...why not just reimburse the license fee and we will have a game).

I think the comments about Australia and the AFL is a very small market, but that is all bullshit....just an excuse really. We have seen 10 plus AFL games in 15 years....and most of us have probably purchased all....and I am certain the publishers etc can make it profitable....but too many corporates probably put their hand in!
 
If you got a dollar from every man, woman and child in Australia you would have around half the budget of a FIFA iteration. That's not PROFIT it's the development BUDGET, add marketing etc... and a profit margin and you see the real picture not the picture some want to see.

I love the game and go week in and week out, I am a mad passionate supporter of the game, however a serious reality check is required here with regard to market, size and profit.
 
Gyroscope_182 said:
So what has to be done to ensure an appropriate market size and the venture to be profitable....and can it be done?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the AFL has to see it as a marketing endeavour and "make a loss" or the budget needs to be low and therefore the quality commensurate with that budget.
 
Gyroscope_182 said:
Surely the AFL itself can help fund on a project like this. The groundwork has been done over the last 15 years to know what works and what does not.

I believe the hardest thing with an AFL game is ensuring each and every aspect is user friendly. AFL Live 1 was the closest thing I believe to touching on that, while AFL Live 2 made the game far more appealing with its innovation in the AFL game.

We just need to combine the two, have modest funding from the league itself (I mean, seriously, as if the AFL are not getting PAID for licensing....so...why not just reimburse the license fee and we will have a game).

I think the comments about Australia and the AFL is a very small market, but that is all bullshit....just an excuse really. We have seen 10 plus AFL games in 15 years....and most of us have probably purchased all....and I am certain the publishers etc can make it profitable....but too many corporates probably put their hand in!
Click to expand...

For a decent game AFL would need to drop atleast 80 million on it.

Australia doesn't have the tax breaks to bring down the costs of producing video games to begin with to make a decent game you need to total rebuild graphics and physics engines expand dev teams etc.

I'm not sure you comprehend how much it costs to produce a game the masses would buy.

Die hard footy fans will buy every game (if they play video games) the majority of AFL supporters will only buy the game if it compares in physics and graphics.

Even then how many units do you think will sell with the dollars dropped?

That requires 800,000 units just to get back the AFL's share.

Inversely big ant needed AFL live to sell 50,000 units to break even and they fell short.

The AFL can afford to take an 80 million dollar hit on a video game. it would be seen as a blunder and we're talking about making a 'decent' game, if the game was to be on par with the best sports games, we're talking about many hundreds of millions of dollars.
 
Thats the info I really wanted to see.

But the main thing I got out of that was

Decent - 800,000 copies
AFL Live 1 - 50,000 copies

This is/was to break-even.

Why would a new game require 16 times the capital as BigAnts game...which itself does not need that much improvement at all...
 
Remember AFL gets money, platform holder (Sony/MS) gets money, distributor gets money, retailer gets money, I think the above calculations are gross income not profit.
 
Gyroscope_182 said:
Thats the info I really wanted to see.

But the main thing I got out of that was

Decent - 800,000 copies
AFL Live 1 - 50,000 copies

This is/was to break-even.

Why would a new game require 16 times the capital as BigAnts game...which itself does not need that much improvement at all...
Click to expand...

Because costs don't grow on a steadily increasing scale they jump up sharply. disregarding graphics which most people want let's look at physics.

The physics engine is my biggest gripe, the problems with AFL lives physics cannot be solved with patches the engine must be stripped down and rebuilt (at best, possibly may need a brand new engine), because the current physics engine is "simplistic"

the engine it needs to be more complex more powerful, basically bigger so it can handle more information. the bigger it is the more people required to program it on the same time scale.

Then of course it needs longer and more extensive testing which means even more people.

To build a physics engine that has more fuild mechanics less glitches would increase development time by atleast 12 months and double the number of people on the team, Not to mention the more expensive tools required to (re)build the engine.

Then the graphics: this comes from the beginning starting with motion capture to get better realistic movements you need better cameras, more cameras and better programs that track more points.

Then the 3D mesh the more complicated the mesh the detail can be placed on the final model, this is vitally important to prevent stretching the skin, and increases the number of pixels.

Next the skin itself, again the model that it's taken from needs to be more detailed as well.

All this takes extra people and extra time and you have to build the engine supporting all of this and again more people checking and rechecking it becomes massive

This is why the money adds up. More time more people and more resources.

As I said early you would at the very least need to double the size of the dev team from AFL live and it would still increase production time, such Is the gap that needs to be filled. Then the extra tools required assist the team.

Man power costs alone more then double.

And as I said that's just for a decent game. The latest games have multiple dev teams working on the same aspects of the game.

Where as AFL live my have one dev team for the physics engine fifa 14 which didn't do any rebuilds had multiple dev teams working on the physics alone and many more for the graphics.
 
Sydney Bloods said:
Exactly that's to cover costs only of money invested not profit's
Click to expand...

Then you're out by a fair margin as 800,000 does not nett $80M, it would have a dev budget of $35M max.
 

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Anyway, moot point - 'aint happening.

Edit: FIFA is rebuilding all the time, I know people on the team. The entire game is rebuilt over a rolling three year period.
 
BigAntStudios said:
Then you're out by a fair margin as 800,000 does not nett $80M, it would have a dev budget of $35M max.
Click to expand...

Really? Where's the rest of the money go?(also I was assuming retail price of $100 a unit.)


BigAntStudios said:
Anyway, moot point - 'aint happening.

Edit: FIFA is rebuilding all the time, I know people on the team. The entire game is rebuilt over a rolling three year period.
Click to expand...

Ah explains alot of there costs then.
 
All I really want is AFL Live 1 with updated rosters and a decent career mode.

The hardest thing to get right is surely the gameplay. AFL live 1 was pretty fantastic in that respect and about 100 times better than any AFL game before or since.

The base was there.

If BigAnt had gotten AFL Live 2 they could have started with that strong base and fleshed out the career mode etc that everyone wanted to see.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk
 
Bowakawa said:
So is AFL Live 3 happening... or not?
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I would guess no. I think what we'll see is a Next Gen AFL game in the next four or five years. Who knows who will develop it or what the quality will be.

The part I don't understand is why the AFL doesn't view gaming as important to their brand. Wave the freaking licence fee and let someone like BA drip feed patches each year. At least that would be some form of progress.
 
Archer_11 said:
The part I don't understand is why the AFL doesn't view gaming as important to their brand. Wave the freaking licence fee and let someone like BA drip feed patches each year. At least that would be some form of progress.
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more with this. Any licencing deal should be for a percentage of profits only.
 
I'd prefer if someone focussed on developing a Football Manager-style game for AFL. Not only because I find that side of things more interesting, but it seems like the main stumbling block with these AFL games is the actual gameplay and getting it right, and that issue would be eliminated with a management-based game. 'Premiership Coach' was decent, but not detailed enough IMO.
 
Ross, you clearly know more on this topic than we do but it seems to me that the production costs would be far smaller for a sequel. Unles you hit file>new and start a new game from scratch, isn't it a case of recording some new animations, tweaking the player speeds, tackling chance, evasion chances, adding new players, etc?
I know that there's still a lot of work to be done (aside from what I've posted here) and maybe the costs fall in licensing. But I had always assumed making a sequel would cost around 60% of the original. (Again, there are probably many costs I wouldn't even consider)
I read many forums and found the general response to AFL Live to be positive. Most of us were happy to have arguably the best AFL game to date and saw it as a great starting point for big ant to turn into a great representation of the sport every few years or so.
I still play Big Ant's AFL Live every few weeks and I'd have bought a sequel no questions asked. I think most people who played the first one would have. This makes me think that sales of the original must have fallen well short of expectations for the first game.

I just hope whoever it is who has a shot at it next time has a really good play of your release and can build from there. After a few days of play, I got to know how to move the ball and it was suddenly the best flowing AFL game I'd played. So I'm sure your work will be built on in a positive way in the future, whether by Big Ant or another company.
 
Lurk3r said:
Because you'd be one of about 20 people.
Click to expand...

And you are what? 10? And I'm guessing that AFL Live 2 is the first AFL game you've played cause it was horrible! AFL Live wasn't perfect by any means but it was fun and if it got cleaned up a bit and had a career mode added to it for more playability it would be a seriously great game! AFL Live 2 is cheesy and boring, and it just doesn't have any flow to it; the gameplay is too stop start!
 
EthanJames21 said:
And you are what? 10? And I'm guessing that AFL Live 2 is the first AFL game you've played cause it was horrible! AFL Live wasn't perfect by any means but it was fun and if it got cleaned up a bit and had a career mode added to it for more playability it would be a seriously great game! AFL Live 2 is cheesy and boring, and it just doesn't have any flow to it; the gameplay is too stop start!
Click to expand...
?

I said that people wouldn't buy update packs every year for AFL Live 1. Not sure what you think I was saying.
 
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